pper; "but don't you eat the new bread; you may have
as much as you want of the old."

"Isn't there any molasses, mammy?" asked Joel, as she bade Polly
good-bye! and gave her numberless charges "to be careful of your eyes,"
and "not to let a crack of light in through the curtain," as the old
green paper shade was called.

"No; if you're very hungry, you can eat bread," said Mrs. Pepper,
sensibly.

"Joel," said Polly, after the mother had gone, "I do wish you could read
to me."

"Well, I can't," said Joel, glad he didn't know how; "I thought the
minister was comin'."

"Well, he was," said Polly, "but mammy said he had to go out of town to
a consequence."

"A what!" asked Joel, very much impressed.

"A con--" repeated Polly. "Well, it began with a con--and I am
sure--yes, very sure it was consequence."

"That must be splendid," said Joel, coming up to her chair, and
slowly drawing a string he held in his hand back and forth, "to go to
consequences, and everything! When I'm a man, Polly Pepper, I'm going to
be a minister, and have a nice time, and go--just everywhere!"

"Oh, Joel!" exclaimed Polly, quite shocked; "you couldn't be one; you
aren't good enough."

"I don't care," said Joel, not at all dashed by her plainness, "I'll be
good then--when I'm a big man; don't you suppose, Polly," as a new idea
struck him, "that Mr. Henderson ever is naughty?"

"No," said Polly, very decidedly; "never, never, never!"

"Then, I don't want to be one," said Joel, veering round with a sigh of
relief, "and besides I'd rather have a pair of horses like Mr. Slocum's,
and then I could go everywheres, I guess!"

"And sell tin?" asked Polly, "just like Mr. Slocum?"

"Yes," said Joel; "this is the way I'd go--Gee-whop! gee-whoa!" and Joel
pranced with his imaginary steeds all around the room, making about as
much noise as any other four boys, as he brought up occasionally against
the four-poster or the high old bureau.

"Well!" said a voice close up by Polly's chair, that made her skip with
apprehension, it was so like Miss Jerusha Henderson's--Joel was whooping
away behind the bedstead to his horses that had become seriously
entangled, so he didn't hear anything. But when Polly said, bashfully,
"I can't see anything, ma'am," he came up red and shining to the
surface, and stared with all his might.

"I came to see you, little girl," said Miss Jerusha severely, seating
herself stiffly by Polly's side.

"Thank you, ma'am,"